Comedy
Dead Boy Detectives
Dead Boy Detectives targets teens in style and story. But it comes with very adult, problematic content.
Lucy Carlyle has known she was different since elementary school. From the moment she looked over the moors and saw apparitions and heard phantom sounds drifting in and out of homes, she knew she had a gift.
At 13, her mother shipped her off to a local training program for rising paranormal investigators. The goal, for her emotionally abusive mom, was to exploit Lucy’s talent and make some money after Lucy’s father drank himself to death. But while Lucy was terrified to go, it was far better than staying with her mom.
So, she threw herself into her training regimen for three years. She learned about paranormal activity, she learned how to spot a spirit and neutralize it and, most importantly, she learned how to hone her gift as a Listener–one who can hear phantasms, decipher how they died and learn what they’re after as they roam the earth.
By her third year of schooling, she and her best friend, Norrie, were well on their way to leaving their small hometown and working for one of the big paranormal agencies when the worst happened.
One night, Lucy, Norrie and their fellow classmates were caught in a battle with spirits. Lucy ran for help, to no avail. Most of the classmates died, and Norrie was ghost locked–left forever in a vegetative state brought on by supernatural powers.
Wanting to forget her past, Lucy hopped on a train and headed to London in search of a new life. A place where no one would know her past and where she could, perhaps, find a new job as a paranormal investigator.
Nearly every agency turned her down. After all, who wants a girl with no identification and skills that don’t go past her third year? But one showed a bit of interest in Lucy’s talents: Lockwood & Co.
Run by teen prodigy Anthony Lockwood, Lockwood & Co. is a place where only the best work (at least according to Anthony), and the best include, so far, Anthony, a talented guy named George Karim and, of course, Lucy. This trio may be young, but they’re dedicated to honing their trade and expertly hunting ghosts.
But that won’t be enough. They’ll have to learn how to evade the watchful eyes of larger groups like the Fittes Agency, as well as learn to trust one another as they risk their lives to uncover secrets and put to rest the wanderers of the paranormal world.
Netflix is not new to pushing out young-adult shows that focus on the supernatural. The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina and Fate: The Winx Saga are two that come to mind. And now, they’re adding to their catalog with Lockwood & Co.
Based on the YA series of books by Jonathan Stroud and brought to life by Ant-Man screenwriter Joe Cornish, Lockwood & Co. focuses on three underdog teens who band together, despite their differences, to take down paranormal activity.
The series, in its first season on Netflix, is rated TV-14 for profanity and some horror. It takes place in Britain, in today’s world–but a world that is haunted by paranormal activity. So much so that everyone has a nightly curfew to try and avoid what lurks in the dark.
The two main characters, Lucy and Anthony, have great chemistry and, so far, this isn’t a show that has any sexual content you need to worry about–which is a breath of fresh air if you’ve turned on any streaming service recently. But that doesn’t mean it’s without problems.
The entire series is steeped in the supernatural. Ghosts, ghouls and spirits are everywhere, and they can be quite terrifying. Violence is also prevalent, but usually just from the past lives of the ghosts who are on the prowl.
This is no Mary Poppins, but it’s also not the salacious Riverdale. It’s somewhere in between, leaving out the lack of clothes while keeping the profanity and adding horror from the afterlife.
Lucy is falsely blamed for the death of her fellow paranormal investigators. She runs away from her small hometown to London in search of a new life, where she meets Anthony Lockwood and George Karim and joins their organization, Lockwood & Co, as a junior paranormal investigator.
Lucy’s most honed skill is her ability to Listen, meaning she can hear the sounds ghosts make that help to distinguish how they died. She hears screeching and crying and learns that a female ghost was choked to death. She also hears a man falling down the stairs to his death.
Ghosts of various forms haunt homes and other buildings. When a group of teens go to expel the ghosts, some are killed while one is left in a vegetative state. Lucy and Lockwood discuss how ghosts manifest, they make a circle with ash for protection and even use swords, chains and special vests to protect themselves and fight off the supernatural beings. Lockwood keeps memorabilia from cases he’s solved, such as a jar that holds a ghost inside and a watch from a ghost who was a mass murderer.
Lockwood says that he once accidentally walked in on George doing yoga in the nude. George walks out in an oversized t-shirt and nothing more (we only see his bare thighs).
Lucy’s mom shares that Lucy’s father drank himself to death. Lucy engages in some underage drinking, but her friend urges her to stop. God’s name is misused twice. The s-word is heard three times and words like “d–n,” “bloody” and “a–” are used a few times each.
Kristin Smith joined the Plugged In team in 2017. Formerly a Spanish and English teacher, Kristin loves reading literature and eating authentic Mexican tacos. She and her husband, Eddy, love raising their children Judah and Selah. Kristin also has a deep affection for coffee, music, her dog (Cali) and cat (Aslan).
Dead Boy Detectives targets teens in style and story. But it comes with very adult, problematic content.
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